American
Composers Orchestra announces the winners of its fifteenth annual
Underwood New Music Readings, one of this country's most coveted
opportunities for emerging composers. The Readings will run Thursday,
May 18th and Friday, May 19th from 10:00 am to 12:30 pm at Miller
Theater at Columbia University. Seven of the nation's most promising
composers in the early stages of their professional careers have been
selected from over two hundred submissions received from around the
country. This year's winners are Anna Clyne,
Fang Man, Robert Gates, Jeff
Myers, Andrea Reinkemeyer, Paul
Richards, and Matthew Tommasini.

The Readings
are under the direction of ACO Artistic Director Robert
Beaser. This year's conductors are George
Manahan and Jeffrey Milarsky;
mentor composers are Paul
Moravec and Stephen
Paulus. The conductors, mentor composers and principal
players from ACO serve as liaisons and provide critical feedback to
each of the participants during and after the reading sessions.
Following the Readings, one of the young composers will receive a
$15,000 commission to write a new work to be performed by ACO.

Last year's
winner, Michael Gatonska,
won the top prize with his work An Expedition Aboard the Third Mind.
Mr. Gatonska's texture-oriented work has been described as
"highly original" with a "unique ability to thread
together finely-carved, diverse 'glimpses' of music into a
convincing, organic whole--a kind of temporal kaleidoscope of style
and color." The 2004 winner, Kristin
Kuster, praised as a "wonderfully ambitious"
composer, "reaching deep for meaning and expressive
breadth," will hear her Underwood-commissioned work, Myrrha,
premiered by ACO at Carnegie Hall on May 3.

Since 1991,
the New Music Readings have provided invaluable career-development
opportunities for emerging composers, and served as a vital resource
to the music field, by identifying a new generation of American
composers. To date, 75 composers have participated in the Readings,
including such award-winning composers as Melinda Wagner, Pierre
Jalbert, Augusta Read Thomas, Randall Woolf, Jennifer Higdon, Daniel
Bernard Roumain, and ACO's Music Alive Composer in Residence, Derek
Bermel. Since participating in ACO's readings, these composers have
held important residencies and had scores of works commissioned,
premiered, and performed by many of the country's prominent symphony
orchestras. The New Music Readings continue ACO's emphasis on helping
to launch composers careers, a tradition that includes many of
today's top composers, such as Ellen Taaffe Zwilich and Joseph
Schwantner, both of whom received Pulitzer Prizes for ACO
commissions; and Robert Beaser, Ingram Marshall, Joan Tower, Aaron
Jay Kernis, Christopher Rouse, and Tobias Picker, whom the orchestra
championed when they were beginning their careers.

Composers
Selected and Works to be Performed

Robert
Gates: Aerials

Robert Gates
received a Masters Degree from The Juilliard School, where he studied
with John Corigliano, and a Bachelors Degree from UCLA, where he
studied with Ian Krouse. He also studied piano with Johana Harris and
Eduardo Delgado. He won a BMI Student Composer Award and an ASCAP
Foundation Morton Gould Young Composer Award for his orchestral
music. His music has been commissioned by Piano Spheres, the Los
Angeles Contemporary Dance Company, Zoom, Elyrica, The Juilliard
Drama Department, Lincoln Center Directors' Lab, The Polyannas, the
Neurotic Young Urbanites, and various theatrical productions in Los
Angeles and New York City. He is also active as a pianist and
accompanist. Mr. Gates has been described as "a very gifted
young composer with a fine craft" and a "large talent."

Andrea
Reinkemeyer: Lured by the Horizon

Andrea
Reinkemeyer earned Doctorate and Masters degrees in composition from
the Univ. of Michigan, where she was the recipient of a Rackham Pre-doctoral
and Regent's Fellowships, and served as Graduate Student Instructor
in electronic music. She also won the Ruth Lorraine Close Musical
Fellows Award and the Outstanding Creativity in Composition Award
from the Univ. of Oregon. Her composition teachers include Michael
Daugherty, Bright Sheng, Susan Botti, James Aikman, and Harold Owen.
Her music has been performed at the conference of the Society of
Electro-Acoustic Music in the U.S., and the Threshold Electronic
Music Festival, by such groups as Sonic New Music Ensemble,
Susquehanna Univ. New Music Ensemble, Univ. of Michigan Symphony
Orchestra, and Pacific Rim Gamelan. Dr. Reinkemeyer is currently
Associate Professor of Composition at Bowling Green State University.
Her Lured by the Horizon has already earned praise as "compelling
and adventurous" an important and fascinating work for orchestra."

Fang
Man: Black and White

Fang Man
studies composition with Steven Stucky and Roberto Sierra at Cornell,
where she is completing her Doctorate. She is a graduate of the
Central Conservatory of Music Beijing, with additional studies with
composers Samuel Adler, Qigang Chen, George Crumb, Marc-Andre
Dalbavie, Pascal Dusapin, David Felder, Aaron Jay Kernis, and
Wolfgang Rihm. Her credits include invitations to the Gaudeamus Music
Week, June in Buffalo, Bowdoin Festival, Minnesota Orchestra Reading,
and Aspen Music Festival. She is the recipient of the Bank of America
Commission, Yan Huang Cup Composition Prize, the Music From China
Award, the Sumner Redstone/Viacom Scholarship, Cecil Effinger
Fellowship, and the Sage and Olin Fellowships from Cornell. Her music
has been performed by the Orchestre National de Lorraine (France),
Minnesota Orchestra, Festival Chamber Orchestra, Music From China
Ensemble, and Cassatt String Quartet. She is among ten composers
chosen by IRCAM for a year-long residency to compose a piece
employing new technology to be premiered at Centre Pompidou Paris in
October 2007. ACO has selected Ms. Fang, recognizing her as "a
major force in orchestral music over the next few years."

Anna
Clyne: Rewind

Anna Clyne
received her Bachelor of Music with Honors from Edinburgh University
and a Master of Music from the Manhattan School of Music. This past
year, she participated in a master class with Pierre Boulez; served
as a fellow at the Bang on a Can Summer Institute with guest composer
Steve Reich; and was the recipient of the TACTUS contemporary music
ensemble student composer commission. Her principal teachers include
Julia Wolfe, Marina Adamia and Marjan Mozetich. Born in London in
1980, Clyne currently resides in New York, where her music has been
performed at Symphony Space, Manhattan School of Music, Columbia
University, MoMA, The Flea Theater, Dance Now Festival, Cooper Union,
New York Musical Theatre Festival, d.u.m.b.o dance festival, and
PS122. Upcoming projects include new works for Hysterica Dance
Company, and Bang on a Can. She will also participate in a composer/choreographer
series at the Joyce SoHo. Ms. Clyne has been described as "a
composer with serious ambitions" willing to experiment with
non-traditional ideas."

Paul
Richards: Music for Midsummer

Paul
Richards's music has won several important awards including the
Jacksonville Symphony's Fresh Ink Competition, ASCAP's Rudolph Nissim
Prize, the Metropolitan Wind Symphony Commission Competition,
International Horn Society Composition Competition, and the Music
Teachers' National Association Composition Competition. His Snake in
the Garden for clarinet and orchestra was recently recorded by
Richard Stoltzman and the Slovak Radio Orchestra. Richards is
currently Associate Professor of Composition and Theory at the Univ.
of Florida. He previously taught at Baylor University. He holds
degrees from the Univ. of Texas at Austin and the Univ. of Arizona,
where his teachers included Dan Welcher, Don Grantham and Dan Asia.
Dr. Richard's music has been hailed as "exciting" and
"rhythmically inventive."

Jeff
Myers:MetamorphosisIII

Jeff Myers
writes "complex and compelling music where every detail is
carefully considered." Born in 1977, Mr. Myers began composing
in 1995, studying at San Jose State University. He continues his
studies at the Univ. of Michigan, where he is pursuing his Doctorate,
and where his teachers have included Bright Sheng, William Bolcom,
and Michael Daugherty. Myers's awards and commissions include ASCAP
Leonard Bernstein Award, a Fromm Music Foundation Commission, several
BMI Student Composer Awards, a New York Youth Symphony First Music
Commission, and the Charles Ives Scholarship from the American
Academy of Arts and Letters. Myers's work includes Metamorphosis for
violin and orchestra, premiered in 2002 by the Eastman Philharmonia
under David Gilbert; Tidtu, premiered by the PRISM saxophone quartet
at Symphony Space, and Regeneration premiered by the New York Youth
Symphony at Carnegie Hall under Paul Haas.

Matthew
Tommasini:Songs
Lost and Forgotten

Matthew
Tommasini has been commissioned by the New York Youth Symphony, the
Milwaukee Ballet, and the University of Michigan Symphony Band. In
addition, his music has been performed by the Riverside Symphony, Ann
Arbor Symphony, and the Brave New Works Ensemble. Recently, Mr.
Tommasini was awarded the Charles Ives Scholarship from the American
Academy of Arts and Letters, and first prize in the SCI/ASCAP
Commission Competition. He studied at UCLA with composers Paul
Chihara, Ian Krouse, and Jerry Goldsmith. He received Masters and
Doctorate degrees from the Univ. of Michigan, where he studied with
Michael Daugherty, William Bolcom, Bright Sheng, Leslie Bassett, and
Evan Chambers. Currently, Mr. Tommasini is working on commissions
from SCI/ASCAP and percussionist Anthony Cirone. Tommasini's Songs
Lost and Forgotten, selected for this year's New Music Readings, has
been described as "attractive," with "three greatly
contrasting movements with lots of variety."

Jeffrey
Milarsky, conductor

Jeffrey
Milarsky is the leading conductor of contemporary music in New York
City. In the United States and abroad, he has premiered and recorded
works contemporary composers, including Charles Wuorinen, Milton
Babbitt, Elliott Carter, Lasse Thoresen, Gerard Grisey, Ralph Shapey,
Luigi Nono, Mario Davidovsky and Wolfgang Rihm. His wide ranging
repertoire, which spans from Bach to Xenakis, has brought him to lead
such accomplished groups as the New York New Music Ensemble, the
Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Columbia Sinfonietta,
Speculum Musicae, Cygnus Ensemble, The Fromm Players at Harvard
University, the Composers' Ensemble at Princeton University, and the
New York Philharmonic chamber music series. Increasingly in demand as
a Music Director, he has been named to that position for New Jersey's
Musica Viva Festival. Most recently, he has joined the faculty of The
Manhattan School of Music as Artistic Director and Conductor of the
Percussion Ensemble.A
much-in-demand percussionist who has performed and recorded with the
New York Philharmonic among many ensembles, Mr. Milarsky is Professor
in Music at Columbia University, where he is the Music
Director/Conductor of the Columbia University Orchestra.

Mr. Milarsky
received his Bachelor and Master of Music degrees from The Juilliard
School. Upon graduation, he was awarded the Peter Mennin Prize for
outstanding leadership and achievement in the arts. He regularly
conducts The Juilliard Orchestra, with whom he has premiered over 70
works of Juilliard student composers over the past fifteen years. He
is also on the Faculty at Juilliard, where has been, until recently,
Director of the Composition Forum and of the Pre-College Percussion Ensemble.

George
Manahan, conductor

Music Director
of the New York City Opera, George Manahan is currently in his tenth
season with the Company. Mr. Manahan is especially well known for his
leadership of diverse productions such as Mourning Become Electra
(Levy), Daphne (Strauss), Ermione (Rossini), Dialogues of the
Carmelites (Poulenc), and also for three "Live from Lincoln
Center" telecasts: La Bohème, Lizzie Borden and Tosca. He
has been a frequent guest conductor with the Seattle Opera,
Glimmerglass Opera and Santa Fe Opera companies, and was principal
conductor with the Minnesota Opera from 1988-1996. Other opera
engagements include Lyric Opera of Chicago, Opera Theater of St.
Louis, Opera National du Paris, Opera Australia, Teatro de Communale
de Bologna, and the Verona Filarmonico. He has conducted world
premieres of operas by Charles Wuorinen, Judith Weir, Krzysztof
Penderecki, Hans Werner Henze, David Lang, Tobias Picker and Wolfgang Rihm.

Mr. Manahan
also enjoys a long-established relationship with the New Jersey
Symphony Orchestra, having served as acting Music Director from 1982
to 1985 and appearing every season since 1997 as guest conductor. He
has made regular appearances with the Manhattan School of Music and
the Juilliard Orchestra and has conducted and taught conducting
master classes at the Aspen Music Festival since the summer of 2004.
Other orchestral engagements include appearances with the Atlanta
Symphony, San Francisco Symphony, Seattle Symphony, Minnesota
Orchestra, Milwaukee Symphony, Indianapolis Symphony, Columbus
Symphony, Charlotte Symphony and the National Symphony.

His formal
musical training includes studies in conducting with Anton Coppola
and George Schick at the Manhattan School of Music, where he served
on the faculty following his graduation, and a fellowship as
Assistant Conductor with the American Opera Center, awarded by The
Juilliard School.

Reservations
and Info

The Underwood
New Music Reading Sessions take place on Thursday, May 18 and Friday,
May 19, 2006 from 10:00 AM - 12:30 PM at Miller Theater at Columbia
University, 116th Street and Broadway in Manhattan. The Readings are
open to the public at no charge, but reservations are suggested. For
reservations or further information, please call (212) 977-8495 or
email readings@americancomposers.org.

Lead
support for the Underwood New Music Readings comes from Mr. Paul
Underwood, the Fromm Music Foundation and The Helen F. Whitaker Fund.

ACO's
emerging composers programs are made possible with the support of
Jerome Foundation, The Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University
and with public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts, New
York State Council on the Arts and the New York City Department of
Cultural Affairs.